The present invention relates generally to a new and improved floatable ball a plurality of which provide a gapless floating ball blanket.
As is known to those skilled in the floating ball blanket art, the floating ball blankets of the prior art are typically comprised of a plurality of spherical, hollow plastic balls used to cover liquid surfaces such as the liquid surface of a typical controlled temperature bath. Such typical controlled temperature bath may include acid pickling, plating, rinsing, dyeing, anodizing, phosphating and food processing tanks containing liquids, or semi-liquids, generally maintained at elevated temperatures.
Such floating ball blankets comprised of the generally hollow spherical floatable balls of the prior art are reputed to help control the temperature by limiting the surface area exposed to air thereby limiting liquid loss by evaporation, heat loss by such evaporation, and heat transfer (either loss or gain) by convection from the surface of the covered liquid.
As is further known to those skilled in the floating blanket art, the spherical floatable balls of the prior art, due to their spherical configuration are engageable only in point-to-point contact, and hence provide a floating ball blanket having a plurality of gaps, between the spherical floatable balls which gaps leave open space for liquid loss by evaporation, heat loss by such evaporation, and heat transfer by convection from the surface of the liquid. Such floatable balls of spherical configuration can cover only approximately 91% of the surface of the liquid and in actual practice, it has been found that such spherical floatable balls known to the prior art float high enough in the liquid that much less than 91% of the liquid surface is in contact with the ball and thus surface evaporation and heat transfer by convection are not curtailed sufficiently as is desired.
Furthermore, the spherical shape of the typical prior art floatable ball allows it to roll freely as the liquid is agitated and this rolling action produces an effect similar to the ballpoint pen action: namely, the liquid which wets the bottom of the ball surface is rolled upwardly and exposed to the air and readily evaporates.